ABSTRACT
This epilogue brings together a variety of issues I have raised in this book and my conclusion. In Chapter 9, I argued that a Chinese Singaporean’s economic and social mobilities are affected by the kinds of aesthetic markers they choose, and this is especially so amongst older Chinese Singaporeans who experience a dramatic change to the world around them. In this photo essay, I will present a visualised biography of individuals whose diasporic journeys closely reflect experiences of aesthetic dissonance and altered economic life-paths and mobilities. As Evans (1993:10–11) notes, ‘biography can illustrate the emotional meaning of the conventional sociological wisdom that we are “socially” constructed…the use of biography is not just to illustrate a social theory but to explain its meaning’. I have chosen this group of individuals because they stand out so much in a wedding, their presence welcome and expected, but their comportment aesthetically dissonant with the commercially dominant wedding aesthetic.
